Somerset Player Toby Mitchell has made the quarter finals of the singles and doubles in the International Tennis Federation event held in Nottingham this week. Mitchell, who trains at the International High Performance centre in Bath, was seeded two for the Grade 4 event held on the hard courts of the East Midlands.
The event, containing a 64 player main draw with 32 players competing in the qualifying competition contained players ranked as high as 104 in the world. Mitchell started the tournament well winning his first and second round against lower ranked British players 6-0 6-3 and 6-4 6-4 respectively. In round three he came up against 15th seeded British player Joshua Paris which he came through 6-0 7-5.
In the quarter finals Mitchell met improving player and 12th seeded player Sebastian Rey, who came through the match 6-3 6-2 with an excellent performance. Rey eventually lost in the semi finals to the third seed.
In the doubles draw Mitchell partnered fellow Brit Callum Poland Smith. The pair, seeded two, won the first round comfortably 6-2 6-4 before having a much more difficult match in round 2 which they had to come through in the third set championship tie-break. In the quarter finals Mitchell faced a pairing including U16 and U18 national champion Jack Findel-Hawkins from Devon. After losing the first set on the tiebreak Mitchell and pairing fought back well taking the second set 7-5. However, they couldn’t keep it going in the championship tiebreak, eventually going down 10-4.
Local Tennis Development Manager James Deem said “It is great to see Toby out their competing on the international circuit and winning matches” he further added “Toby represents the county really well and all in Somerset tennis wish him success in future events”.
Mitchell, from near Burnham on Sea in Somerset has climbed the U18 ITF rankings this year after a series of good performances in far flung places such as Uzbekistan, Tunisia and South Africa. Having peaked just inside the top 200 he now lies at 219 in the world rankings.